Bono, Spielberg up for Gorbachev awards

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Irish rocker Bono and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have been nominated for a new prize created by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to mark his 80th birthday, the organizers said. The “Mikhail Gorbachev: the man who changed the world” awards are named after his three major policies which became the buzzwords during his rule.

The awards after his glasnost (openness), perestroika (restructuring) and uskorenie (acceleration) reforms will be presented at a lavish event in London on March 30.

“This is an award for those who have shown themselves to be people capable of changing the world for the better,” Gorbachev, who turned 80 on March 2, said late Thursday.

Other nominees are film director and producer Steven Spielberg, CNN founder Ted Turner, Martin Cooper, who made the world’s first mobile phone, and Brazilian former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.